Ubuntu 7.04 on Mac OS X 10.4 with VMware Fusion

by Volker Weber

Installation started at 9:30. Less than half an hour later we have a fully patched system with VMware tools installed. Amazing.

This is what makes it so fast: no need to read a physical install medium.

install from image

Update: Two hours later. I should not have trusted the IBM installer. Better kill the VM and create a new one. And then make a snapshot before calling the installer. Fool me once ...

Comments

How about the performance?

Joerg Hochwald, 2007-08-20

Didn't I just write that? ;-) Raw installation of Ubuntu took about 8 minutes. A 2 GB/2GHz MacBook is a pretty powerful machine. Everything that is slow on this machine, is slow everywhere else.

Volker Weber, 2007-08-20

Ich freu mich schon auf meinen neuen Mac!

Moritz Petersen, 2007-08-20

I installed Ubuntu 7.04 the same way (iso image) with Parallels and am quite happy. Some glitches: Parallels seems to have a boiler mode, my macbook pro gets unusal hot - would like to know if this is the case with VMWare as well. Shutting down Ubuntu within the Parallels environment leaves me with a scrambled screen for quite some time ...

Any comments on VMWare vs. Parallels wrt heat ?

Henning Wriedt, 2007-08-20

No idea. It does not run hot with VMware, but I have not tried Parallels.

Volker Weber, 2007-08-20

Canonical should distribute a disc image of an installed Ubuntu.

Time to install: a few seconds.

Timo Stamm, 2007-08-20

Like so? Or so? This is one of the things you could never have with Windows. At least not legally.

Volker Weber, 2007-08-20

Well, you can download and run Windows legally, if you are able to run a Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machine. It expires in December of this year though, but as far as I know they do release newer versions (with later experation dates).

Downloadable over here

They released these for developers needing to check compatibility for IE6 if you run on Vista or have upgraded to IE7 or if you run on XP and don't want to upgrade to IE7 but still need to test against that browser.

Erwin van Hunen, 2007-08-20

yes, WHEN you can run VPC ... Microsoft also stated officially that Virtual PC runs on Power PC ONLY (i.e. not on Intel machines), and that there is NO plan to release an Intel version....

Stefan Heinz, 2007-08-21

Volker what was the problem with the IBM installer. I have tried to install Lotus Notes 8 Gold build on my new Opensuse VM and it runs very smooth without some special tricks. I expanded the tar to a folder and then started the installer as root. On the first startup of Lotus Notes as user i got the normal installation procedure. So far no problems although the installer GUI looks very bad on Linux, but how often do you install. The strange thing is, that everything in Notes is based on SWT, but the installer is a very weak programmed Swing GUI. Looks like someone with not much knowledge about Swing made the installer.

Ralf M Petter, 2007-08-21

Henning, the temperature with VMware Fusion is much better/lower but depends on the system load of the virtual machine. VMware even feels faster than Parallels and the host system is more usable while running vms. Give it a try, you can get a 30-days evaluation key from VMware.

Stefan Funke, 2007-08-21

Opensuse runs the installer differently because the default shell in Suse is bash. And in Ubuntu 7.0.4 it is dash, see DashAsBinSh

linking to bash resolves the installer issue, as detailed by the howto. You want to revert to dash for performance reasons. Personally, I think that the installer should try to be more resilient.

Lars Berntrop-Bos, 2007-08-21

@Stefan: Thanks for the real life experience - I just recently switched to Mac and am in the process of evaluating both Parallels (up to now, started with it because I was assuming more experience on Mac), soon VMWare and Bootcamp.

I always liked VMWare on both Linux and Windows platforms so I will give it a try - I wasn't aware that you can even move VMWare images between platforms - might be the most interesting feature and reason to move to VM for me.

Henning Wriedt, 2007-08-21

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